The Cylon Empire tricks the Twelve Colonies into believing they are striving for peace. Then they ambush the unprepared colonies and destroy the military's Battlestar fleet. One surviving Battlestar, the Galactica, under the command of Commander Adama, gathers the remaining humans and leads them in the search for the legendary 13th colony called Earth.

Apollo and Starbuck discover a void in space. Commander Adama is convinced that this void will lead them to the planet Kobol, and orders they go through.

While Commander Adama leads the rag-tag fleet of ships to the planet Kobol, where he hopes to find clues of Earth's location, the Viper pilots contract a disease, making it necessary for the women to take on fighter patrol duties. But the traitor Baltar leads the Cylons in an attack on the Galactica.

When a Cylon attack destroys most of the fleet's food supply, the Galactica must trade equipment for grain on a rural planet plagued by the Borays, a group of pig-like marauders.

While on patrol, Apollo and Starbuck encounter the supposedly lost Battlestar Pegasus, commanded by the living legend, Commander Cain.

The brash Commander Cain insists that the Galactica join in on a frontal attack on the Cylons -- an attack that Adama believes would be a suicide mission.

While the fleet is plagued by glowing lights that constantly fly past them too fast to be followed, Apollo, Starbuck, and Sheba find the remains of a shipwreck, with a mysterious and seemingly all-powerful being named Count Iblis, who helps them capture Baltar.

While the fleet is plagued by glowing lights that constantly fly past them too fast to be followed, Apollo, Starbuck, and Sheba find the remains of a shipwreck, with a mysterious and seemingly all-powerful being named Count Iblis, who helps them capture Baltar.

When Apollo and Starbuck find a primitive sleeper ship carrying a man, a woman, and four children, speculation spreads in the fleet that the people are from Earth.

When Apollo and Starbuck find a primitive sleeper ship carrying a man, a woman, and four children, the inhabitants reveal that they are from Terra, an Earth-like planet at war with the evil Eastern Alliance.

Apollo and Starbuck follow the escaped Eastern Alliance ship back to Terra, where they help the Terrans overcome a nuclear holocaust, with the help of the race of white lights that had earlier helped them defeat Count Iblis.